Little Flowers Girls’ Club ~ The Gift of Fortitude

by | May 1, 2012 | Fleur-de-lis, Little Flowers, Little Flowers Wreath IV, St. Joan of Arc | 15 comments



Last Thursday afternoon we had our 5th Little Flowers Girls’ Club meeting for Wreath IV, and first meeting since December!

I hadn’t intended on taking such a long baby break – just January and February – but March and April were filled with sickness for half the girls in my group, so our meeting kept getting postponed.

My girls (and their momma!) were so excited to finally have friends over again. The meeting began at 3:30, but we happily visited with guests until about 9pm, long after the meeting had ended. It was so nice!

This meeting focused on the gift of Fortitude and St. Joan of Arc. Despite the months I had to prepare, by Thursday morning I hadn’t done a thing to get ready, but thankfully everything fell into place. Here are a few highlights from our meeting:

~ Coloring Pages ~

St. Joan of Arc from CHC
St. Joan of Arc from St. John’s
St. Joan of Arc from St. Anne’s Helper

My mother-in-law also sent each of the girls in my group a copy of The Way of the Cross Coloring Book which was recently published by Aquinas Kids.   Even though I wasn’t able to get them to the girls during Lent they were all very excited and loved looking through the beautiful pages.  
~ Wreath IV Lap Book ~

We had a short lesson on the gift of Fortitude and St. Joan of Arc, and then continued our lesson by reviewing our Lap Book mini-books from our last meeting, and then working on the new additions for the gift of Fortitude.

Here is an overview of what was completed (*some are taken home to complete):
 
Additional Resources:

Movie Suggestion from Member’s Guide:
The Scarlet and the Black


~ Notebook Pages ~

For the notebook pages, I used the motto for fortitude, a quote from St. Joan of Arc, an image (in the public domain) of St. Joan of Arc, a definition on the gift of Fortitude from My Catholic Faith, along with a short prayer for Fortitude (St. Augustine) with an invocation to St. Joan of Arc.

You can download my document here.

Here is a picture of the sample page I (very quickly) created
(and cropped from the picture above):

Here are a the girls’ completed notebook pages:

~ Craft ~

Last summer, I had planned to order the Banner and Woven Cross Kits from Illuminated Ink for St. Joan of Arc and the Gift of Fortitude… Lena also shared an excellent craft for the gift of Fortitude, that I would have loved to try had our meeting taken place during Lent as we had originally planned.   Instead I ended up using a craft that I purchased a few years ago, having the girls paint Stained Glass Cross Suncatchers.  I’m pretty sure that I had purchased these at Walmart.

We hung them on the window to see how they’d look:

*my girls’ are missing from this picture, and currently hanging on their bedroom window.

We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.
Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

~ Snack Time ~

Saintly Symbols Cupcakes :: St. Joan of Arc

One of the symbols for St. Joan of Arc is the Fleur-di-lis. 

White Cupcakes (baked in Yellow Cupcake Liners), topped with some homemade frosting, gold sprinkles, and a chocolate fleur de lis (made with this Candy Mold)
The feast of St. Joan of Arc is celebrated on May 30th. 
~ Group Photo ~ 

Grant me the Gift of Fortitude, so that I may overcome courageously all the assaults of the devil, and all the dangers of this world which threaten the salvation of my soul.

St. Joan of Arc, pray for us! 

15 Comments

  1. Lena

    lovely meeting. i like the lap book.

    Reply
  2. Cheryl

    Very timely, too–doing something on St. Joan of Arc. Did you know that this year is the 600th anniversary of St. Joan of Arc's birth? (The patron saint of our church is St. Joan of Arc, so we are having special masses and celebrations to remember her this year.)

    Reply
  3. mel

    I like the one scrapbook page that is so totally different from the others, hehe. My child would do that…just on principle.

    Reply
  4. CeAnne @ Sanctus Simplicitus

    What a wonderful post Jessica! It looks like such a fun group, how does one get started? Is there a book or something you use as a guideline? It must be lots of fun to be part of your house, you are always doing such fun and inspiring things!! Something I'm sure your kids will always remember!

    Reply
  5. Kelly

    Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

    Beautiful crafts & lapbooks.
    Beautiful food.
    Beautiful girls. 🙂

    Well done, Jessica!

    Reply
  6. Jessica Gordon

    Thank you, CeAnne!

    I have an informational post here: Our Little Flowers Girls' Club – it includes information about the program we are using, as well as information on how I got our group started. It also includes the links for all of my planning, as well as links to all of our meetings! This is our 4th year and we are currently completing the 4th and final "Wreath" of the program.

    I do use the Leader's Guide for part of my meetings, and the girls each have the Member's Guide, Sash, and earn Patches… You can find all that and more in the link above.

    When I started my group, I came up with a Notebook/Scrapbook page idea for the girls in my group, as well as various snack ideas, expanding on the ideas offered through the program. All the links to my documents can be found in each meetings' post.

    It has been a LOT of fun, but honestly I am looking forward to a break this coming year… Just two more meetings and our Mother/Daughter Tea and we will have completed the whole program!!! 🙂

    Reply
  7. Jessica Gordon

    No, I didn't know that! Thank you for sharing! We will be having our next meeting before her feast day, so I will have to share this with the girls when we do our review of this last meeting. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Jessica Gordon

    I know! I love it!! It looks like most of the girls used the sample page this month as a guide, but that is not always the case. I love seeing their different personalities shine through – by watching who has to do it exactly like mine, and those that make them as different as possible! For a couple years I had a girl that always turned her page sideways and created a landscape, rather than a portrait style, scrapbook page!

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    THANK YOU! As always my girls had an absolute blast. It was so wonderful to visit too. We need to do it more often!

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    May I ask what type of printer you have? Mine eats ink like crazy. Love printing the coloring pages, but wow! Even on a gray scale setting we go through ink quickly! Anyhow, love the coloring pages!

    Reply
  11. Patty

    I had to teach our Little Flowers class this time around and we had Fortitude from the wreath III book. I used your hyacinth cupcake idea. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  12. Jessica Gordon

    We have this Canon PIXMA Inkjet Printer. I always set it to Grayscale and Fast when printing coloring pages. Still, with all the printing we do, between Little Flowers, Lap Books, and everything else, I purchase quite a bit of Ink each year.

    Reply
  13. Elizabeth

    Love the lapbook – so inspirational! Your posts and planning guidelines have been the only reason I could possibly have attempted to begin a program in our area…we are so grateful! We have had four meetings to date/Wreath I. I look forward to pulling up this post in the future for more help :).

    I love how you organize/edit your photos. What do you use and how do you put multiple images together with borders?

    God Bless you and thanks again!

    Reply
  14. Jessica Gordon

    I'm so glad that my posts have been helpful!

    I really don't know much about editing photos… I use a Mac and download my pictures into iPhoto. The collages of pictures I make are actually just certain pictures made into a Photo Card in iPhoto and then I just take a screen shot (shift command 4) of the card… I'm sure there are much easier ways and better programs, but this works for me! 🙂

    Reply

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